Weekly Report - Year 3 Weeks 27-28

Forgot to update last week! We did do school though, and we've had a productive TWO weeks. :)

Tornado Boy

Math: We finished the geometry section of Singapore 5B. Now on to average and rate.

Reading: He read Martha Washington: America's First Lady.

Grammar: We worked on Adverbs the last two weeks.

Writing: In week 27, we wrote a letter to Grandmama. The little ones joined in this adventure, and Grandmama was very happy to see letters from all 3 of her grandchildren. :)

Also, R&S English had a writing assignment this past week where he was to retell the story of the feeding of the 5000 from the Bible. He did well with this assignment, though we had some issues with the directions at first. R&S gives you a topic sentence that kind of sums up the story, so he used that sentence, then put one more sentence and was done. LOL. I said that wasn't correct and he'd have to redo it. He couldn't get past that topic sentence, so I had him leave it out. He then wrote a wonderful paragraph, retelling the story nicely. We used IEW's Story Sequence Chart to help us, except we made it one paragraph instead of the 3 that IEW does. This gave us a nice outline to work from, and he had no problem writing the story after that.

I never did get around to having him title it...

Handwriting: He worked on some letter strokes individually the last two weeks. We're nearing the end of the workbook!

Spelling: Completed lessons 6 and 7 in R&S Spelling. Lesson 6 was a review lesson with 50 words on the test! He got them all right. I just had to split the test over two days. He also aced the lesson 7 test.

Latin: We have learned "ambulo" (I walk), "ad" (to/toward) and "acta" (seashore).

Read-Aloud: We started reading Little House in the Big Woods as our bedtime story. Tornado Boy said, "I recognize two parts of what you read." Yep, those parts were from WWE1! I've actually read at least half the book to him back in first grade, but he only remembered the WWE1 sections. We're also reading Carry on, Mr. Bowditch! for history.

Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels. Jesus has talked about what's about to happen to him, and said that someone will betray him.

History: We read a couple stories in American Adventures Part 1 and started reading The Story of Eli Whitney.

Science: We lost our Brain last week! But thankfully, we found it and were able to do Chapters 3 and 3.5. We learned that Tornado Boy leans more left brained, but has some right brained tendencies. I'm more left brained than he is. These results didn't surprise me. :)

The Brute

Math: We've been adding and subtracting numbers within 40, using our basic facts under 10 to help us. The Brute is looking forward to getting to multiplication soon!

We also completed Life of Fred Cats and started Dogs.

Reading: Big news here is that this past week, READING HAS CLICKED!!!!!!!!!! He is no longer painfully sounding out every single phonogram of every single word. Woohoo! I knew it was coming because the previous week, he had started to blend the first two letters of the word like Phonics Pathways has you do. This was very helpful! This past week, he has been reading some of his Star Wars Phonics readers (the whole thing on his own, mostly), some A Beka "I Do Read" books, and some Scholastic "High Frequency Readers". He is very excited that he has this new found skill! Yipee!!!

Writing: We worked on "A", "a", "U", and "u" the last two weeks. And of course he wrote a letter to Granmama:

"We saw Jack Hanna at the VBC."

Other: We completed 2 weeks of Sonlight P4/5.

Mischief

Mischief has been in a reading and writing mode the last couple weeks. He is orally sounding words out for fun, figuring out how to spell some CVC words. He is also writing his alphabet, though I realized that he gets J and G confused.

Writing the alphabet... sort of...

"Granmama"... sort of...

Mischief also wrote a page that said, "Love <name>", and he wrote that perfectly (me telling him the letters). Granmama was surprised at how well he wrote for a 3 year old. Now if he'll just pick a hand to write with... :)

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 26

We've had a busy, but good week! Tornado Boy got braces Wednesday, then two of the brackets fell off the next morning during breakfast, so we had to go back in Thursday after speech therapy to get them put back on.

On top of that, Tornado Boy and The Brute were leaving town with their Daddy later that afternoon for a Nashville Predators (hockey) game. So we had to get all of our schoolwork done Thursday shortly after lunch and still have time for those two to get in a short nap before their trip, since they'd be staying up late. Oh, and our wonder pup, Keiko, had a skin issue that we needed to get checked out at the vet. Tuesday. It's a wonder we got school done at all this week, but we did!

The Brute lost two teeth this week as well, so he's our toothless wonder!

Tornado Boy

Math: He finished the percents unit and did Review 9. He found the review to be quite easy and finished it in one sitting. Hooray! We'll be getting to some geometry next, and he likes geometry (unlike his mother).

Reading: He finished George Washington: Young Leader.

Grammar: We did possessive pronouns as adjectives this week.

Diagram (review sentence)... and that should say "Joel's"

Writing: We did week 27 of WWE.

Handwriting: He did 4 pages in Pentime 2. He's working on capital letters now.

Spelling: Finished week 5 of R&S Spelling 4. He aced the test plus got two bonus words (I never tested the first week, so I took the two hardest words from that week - he remembered them;). He also did very well on the work itself this week. He often has several that he misses, because the exercises can be pretty hard, but this week he got most of them right.

Latin: We did lessons 48 and 49, and had much 8 year old boy giggling as we learned "sed" ("but"). I had to say, "No, not that butt..."

Read-Aloud: We finished Toliver's Secret and Mr. Revere and I. I think I only got to one chapter in Five Children and It this week.

Bible: Still harmonizing the gospels.

History: We learned about the writing of the Constitution and the issues involved with big states vs. little states, the setup of the 3 branches of the government, etc.

Science: We did Chapter 2.5 of "The Brain", learning about the layers surrounding the brain, the blood brain barrier, and cerebral-spinal fluid.

Art: YES! WE DID ART!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok, we did it on Saturday, but it still counts! :) We did the first activity in Usborne's Art Treasury, doing a swirly landscape after learning about Van Gogh's "Starry Night".

Before

After

The Brute

Math: We worked with 2-digit numbers and did several exercises. This stuff is still super easy, so we usually did 2-3 lessons per day.

Reading: We did a couple pages in Phonics Pathways and read more Star Wars Phonics readers. Ah... bribery. :)

Writing: We worked on the letter 'u'. I think we only did handwriting one day this week.

Other: We did a week of Sonlight and another chapter of Life of Fred Cats. We're almost done with Cats.

Art: Same as Tornado Boy.

Before

After

Mischief

Mischief did a few words here and there in Phonics Pathways plus his little workbooks. He also played Starfall a lot, since he didn't go on the hockey game trip.

Sitting on the arm of the chair...

 And of course, he joined us for art. :)

Before (Mischief and Mama)

After (Mischief)

After (Mama)

Weekly Report - Year 3 Week 25

Whoops! I haven't updated in 2 months! We HAVE been doing school. I promise! :)

We took about 3 weeks off at Christmas, then started back up a month ago and have been going strong. I think the only major change we made in curriculum use is to add in Ellen McHenry's "The Brain" for our science right now. We are really enjoying it so far!

Tornado Boy

Math: We are doing percentages in Singapore 5B right now. This has been pretty easy for him, and sometimes he's done 2 lessons in a day. We are also catching up to that spot in CWP5, so we'll need to slow down there (I like it to be a BIT behind where we are in the textbook/workbook). We're in Volume in CWP5.

Reading: This week, he began reading George Washing: Young Leader.

Grammar: I must say, I'm absolutely loving R&S English 4 these days. Go figure. :) We are now in the Adjectives chapter, having just finished Pronouns. I usually assign roughly half the written work... yes, written. It is stretching him in good ways. He is also learning to write properly from a textbook on loose leaf paper.

Diagramming... and getting silly with the end letters falling into the seas. :P

Writing: We completed week 26 of WWE2, and we also mailed some letters we had written the previous week for a R&S English lesson. His assignment was to write a letter to a friend, inviting them over. The younger boys decided that they, too, would write letters. So Tornado Boy invited his friend D, The Brute invited D's younger brother J, and Mischief invited the Mom Lori. :) Tornado Boy addressed the envelope himself and did quite a good job. The family did receive the letter this week.

Tornado Boy's letter

Spelling: We have completed 4 weeks of R&S Spelling 4. This book is definitely a step up in the difficulty department! He struggles with some of the exercises, but he's acing the tests, so the exercises are clearly working. :)

Latin: We did lessons 46 and 47 of Getting Started With Latin this week. It had been a few weeks since we last did Latin, but he did very well anyway.

Read-Aloud: We are currently reading Five Children and It, which the boys are quite enjoying! For Sonlight history read-aloud, we are also doing Toliver's Secret, and since we skipped it when it came up as a reader (didn't own it yet), Mr. Revere and I.

Bible: We are still working through the harmony of the gospels. We have gotten through the triumphal entry.

History: We haven't had to read Landmark for the last 2 weeks because we read ahead 3 weeks ago. :) We did do 2 chapters of Story of the USA book 2. I personally like Landmark better. We also started If You Were There When They Wrote the Constitution...

Science: We have done 2 chapters of "The Brain". The first chapter included learning a bit about Phineas Gage and Albert Einstein. This week's chapter taught us the different parts of the brain and what each of them does.

The Brute

Math: The Brute is cruising along in Singapore 1B now. He often does 2 lessons in a day because they are so simple right now. He loves math and is good at it. Yay! Right now, we are reviewing numbers up to 40.

Reading: We have recently started using Phonics Pathways, which The Brute is liking ok. We still pull out Dancing Bears sometimes, but I felt like he needed something "different" for a bit. I have also been bribing him with Star Wars Phonics books - he gets to read one after he does his phonics lesson. ;) They have been wonderful, and he really loves that he can read a "real" book, even if he's only reading the bold words.

Writing: I started him on Pentime 1 Book 1 a couple weeks ago. So far, he has focused on the letter A/a and U. And of course, he wrote that letter to his friend:

The Brute's letter

Other: We have consistently been one week behind in P4/5 compared to Tornado Boy's Core D lately, so this week, I finally caught us up! We read all of week 18 in one day, then did week 19 across 2 days. The boys enjoyed listening to a couple Jim Weiss stories on a Tall Tales CD one day.

Mischief

Mischief is working through Phonics Pathways also, just a bit behind The Brute. He sometimes does just 4 words in a day, which is fine. He also has various workbooks that he does independently. He, too, wrote a letter, as already mentioned, and he drew the "Where's My Water?" board game on the back. I love his alligator!!!! He also wrote his name very nicely, but I've blanked it out in this picture. ;)

Mischief's letter - "Dear Lori, Come play." (and some practice D's in the middle)

Pretty good alligator for 3.5 years old! :)